From Permanent Precarity to Permanent Power

No other institution — not schools, employers or prisons — invests in the leadership potential of workers with records.

Many find work through temp agencies that place them in industrial worksites, construction zones, warehouses and manufacturing facilities. These agencies offer employers cheap, on-demand labor, the power to reassign or discard workers at will and minimal legal liability. Workers are sent to unfamiliar sites under supervisors they barely know, with no promise of returning the next day. There’s no continuity, no shared identity and no protection. The point is to keep workers too isolated to organize, too replaceable to resist.

At Beyond the Bars, we’re changing that. We’re building peer-led political education programs that inoculate workers against the Right’s attacks and the Left’s broken promises. We’re challenging probation systems that extend punishment into the workplace through mandatory employment requirements, restrictions on work hours and locations, and burdensome fines and fees, all of which can lead to reincarceration if workers are unable to comply.

And we’re taking on the corporate forces that profit from permanent precarity — and the government systems that protect them. Just last month, we stalled SB 1672/HB 6033, a bill backed by corporate giant Pacesetter Personnel Services and pushed by one of Florida’s most powerful lobbyists, Ron Book. The bill would have stripped nearly 1 million temp workers of the few protections they have, like drinking water and a place to sit during the sweltering summer months. But through direct, worker-led organizing, we made legislators feel the heat they thought they could avoid.

Our model blends distributed organizing (where member committees drive decision-making and action) with worker-to-worker organizing, training temp worker-leaders to spark fights wherever they land. We are generating brush fires that force temp agencies, client companies, and public officials to reckon with the power of organized resistance.

Our leadership development process moves step by step. It begins with participatory research: engaging temp workers, temp agency administrative staff and reentry service providers to map where exploitation concentrates — like agencies clustered near jails, warehouses with high injury rates and job sites with constant turnover. We trace who profits, from subcontractors to brand-name corporations, and identify where fights can ignite: on the job, in probation offices or through policy campaigns targeting corporate abuse. From there, we train workers to lead direct actions and political education, organize meetings and mobilizations, run campaigns and ultimately become Strategic Team Leaders who guide new organizers and grow the base.

The process is intensive because no other institution — not schools, employers or prisons — invests in the leadership potential of workers with records. We see what others refuse to see: the talent, vision and discipline of the criminalized working class. We go beyond individual skill-building to cultivate the capacity for collective struggle.

We know we can’t stop at site fights. Winning a wage theft claim or a fan for an overheated workspace is important, but it doesn’t challenge the broader legal and economic structures that make exploitation possible in the first place.

In the short term, we are developing stronger worker organizing in our region by launching as many workplace fights as possible led by temp workers with records who are ready to challenge exploitation directly.

In the medium term, we are building a permanent base of workers with records who stay organized and politically active even after they leave temp work.

In the long term, we are pushing for greater union density across hyper-exploitative industries.

We’re seeing signs of hope. Even in one of the most repressive labor environments in the country, more unions in Florida are showing interest in organizing low-wage industries. We stand in solidarity with these efforts, always with the leadership of workers with records at the center.

As co-executive director of Beyond the Bars, I can tell you that we are not a service program offering charity or one-off relief. We are developing organizers and fighters with the skills, discipline and collective power to confront and change the conditions of exploitation and criminalization.

Because mass incarceration didn’t just destroy families. It disorganized the working class.

Because Florida’s economy didn’t just ​“neglect” workers with records. It built its labor supply on their permanent precarity.

At Beyond the Bars, we are organizing workers who were pushed out, locked up and discarded, and we are building their power to lead.

We know the barriers because we live them.

We know the fight because we are in it every day.

And we know that when workers with records organize,

We don’t just survive.

We win.